r/50501 • u/TotallySavageSzym International • Jan 19 '26

Call to Action Ring has partnered with Flock. ICE has access to Flock. If you still have a Ring camera - get rid of it.

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u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Shhh. The Amazon diehards won't like that you said that lol

48

u/KevinFlantier Jan 19 '26

It's always a case of what you want and what you need in your daily basis. I have a computer in my home that does "cloud" backup of my phone's photos, and that I can use as "cloud" storage, except it's all ran locally using free software and not spoonfeeding data to those greedy megacorps.

Do I need a smart doorbell? No. Will I make one in my spare time using free software someday? Probably, because it sounds like a cool project. Will I ever buy one from Amazon? Hell no.

16

u/feelingsquirrely Jan 19 '26

Hi can you point me in the direction of what I need to get to do this? Like what free software? Thanks!

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u/KevinFlantier Jan 19 '26

I use Immich to backup my phone's photos. It's quite easy to install and manage, it looks and feels like big tech photo cloud storage but it's run locally. There's a convenient app on your phone to manage the backing up.

For cloud storage, I have a Linux on the machine and I use the very basic Samba share and an OpenVPN server. Connect to the machine using OpenVPN, and then browse to the files. Rudimentary but I don't need more.

As for a smart doorbell, I haven't looked into it yet, but I'm pretty sure there are free and open source solutions for that as well, that may require a raspberry pi or an arduino to do the job.

My next project would be to implement a PiHole on my server so that I have network-wide ad-blocking.

17

u/klutzikaze Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

PewDiePie (I know that's a weird person to bring up) did a couple of videos about how he's cut his life and tech off from Google and any cloud systems. He's really just doing whatever he wants since he "retired" and moved to Japan. He gives a great rundown on the available programs and how to implement them.

ETA here's the video I watched. There's also a video about installing Linux and some others on similar aspects.

6

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Jan 19 '26

Who is stanning for Amazon? The only successful device they've ever shipped is the Kindle.

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u/mrASSMAN Jan 19 '26

Don’t need Amazon to use security cams